﻿Current and Recent Projects﻿

NOKUT International Advisory Panel on Teacher Education in Norway (2016-present)﻿

Members of the Advisory Panel

Chaired by Dr. Cochran-Smith and composed of international scholars in teacher education, the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) International Advisory Panel on Teacher Education in Norway was established in connection with the Norwegian government’s introduction of five-year integrated master's programs for primary and lower secondary education. The purpose of the advisory group is to help ensure that this change in degree structure results in high quality educational experiences for teacher candidates. The advisory group also has a broader task: to help further improve teacher education at the primary and lower secondary levels by describing how to improve Norwegian teacher education institutions overall.

New Graduate Schools of Education: A Strategic Opportunity for Investigation​​(2015-present)﻿

Funded by the Spencer Foundation and led by Dr. Cochran-Smith and a team of researchers, the New Graduate Schools of Education (nGSEs) Study is an exploration of a controversial innovation in teacher education, which involves shifting teacher preparation away from universities and relocating it within new graduate schools of education, unaffiliated with universities. Most nGSEs were founded by urban charter school leaders. They concentrate on the pre-professional preparation of teachers and are state-authorized to grant master’s degrees and certify new teachers. Advocates sometimes characterize teacher preparation at nGSEs as a “third way” of teacher preparation that differs from both fast-track entry routes such as Teach for America, which they perceive as recruitment rather than preparation, and “traditional” university programs, which they perceive as failing to produce teachers who can boost achievement in urban schools.The purpose of the nGSE Study is to assess nGSEs as a new model of teacher preparation through an analysis of the discourse, practices and policies of nGSEs based on analysis of public documents and materials, interviews with thought leaders nationally, and cross-case study of multiple nGSE sites. The case studies are based on close observations, in-depth interviews with participants, and analysis of internal documents and institutional data as well as publicly available materials. This study seeks to uncover the rhetoric and reality surrounding teacher preparation at nGSEs, comparing the phenomenon as planned and described with the phenomenon as enacted in particular sites. The study aims to assess the project of teacher preparation at nGSEs as a lever for boosting teacher quality and reducing inequality for students from minority backgrounds and economically disadvantaged families, especially those in urban schools. In addition to Cochran-Smith (Principal Investigator), the nGSE research team includes: Dr. Elizabeth Stringer Keefe (Co-Principal Investigator), doctoral student Molly Cummings Carney (Project Coordinator), Dr. Andrew Miller (Researcher),doctoral student Juan Gabriel Sanchez (Graduate Student Researcher), and doctoral student Marisa Olivo (Graduate Student Researcher).

﻿Project TEER (2014-present)﻿

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The TEER team at AERA 2017 in San Antonio, TX

Coming April 2018

​Led by Dr. Cochran-Smith, ProjectTEER (Teacher Education and Education Reform) is a collaborative research group interested in the intersection of teacher education policy and practice, on one hand, and neoliberal education reform, on the other. Dr. Cochran-Smith and eight current and former Boston College doctoral students (Dr. Megina Baker, Stephani Burton, Molly Cummings Carney, Dr. Wen-Chia Chang, Dr. Beatriz Fernandez, Dr. Elizabeth Stringer Keefe, Dr. Andrew Miller, and Juan Gabriel Sánchez) meet regularly to discuss readings, issues, and events related to the rapidly changing landscape of teacher education in the United States. In particular, the group focuses on new initiatives related to teacher preparation, licensure, and accountability and examines the ways the work of teacher education is being redefined by current education reform efforts. Informed generally by a discourse perspective on educational policy and employing the tools of frame analysis, several key questions are guiding the group’s work: How are the problems of teacher education constructed and framed within the current educational policy paradigm? What are the key contemporary initiatives that are proposed as solutions to these problems? How are these initiatives (re)defining practice and policy in teacher education?

RITE selfie: Team members taking a break from AERA 2017 in San Antonio, TX

Project RITE (Rethinking Initial Teacher Education for Equity)﻿is a research project led by a two-country research team at the University of Auckland (Auckland, New Zealand) and Boston College (Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA). A fundamental premise underlying Project RITE is that the ultimate goal of initial teacher education, as a values-oriented professional enterprise, is to prepare teachers who not only understand how intersecting systems of inequality operate, but also know how to promote and support marginalized students’ academic, social, emotional, civic, and critical learning within a range of school environments and contexts. It is this phenomenon—teacher candidates/graduates challenging inequities and engaging in patterns of teaching practice that promote students’ learning—that is the major object of interest in Project RITE. Accordingly, the ultimate goal of RITE, as a research endeavor, is to develop an explanatory theory of teachers’ learning during the critical period of initial teacher education (and beyond) that helps us understand the complex, contingent, and multiple influences on whether, how and to what extent teacher candidates/teachers learn to engage in patterns of teaching practice that support students’ learning and challenge existing inequities in the system. To achieve this goal, the concrete task of Project RITE is to pose new questions and conduct a series of interrelated, mixed methods empirical studies, grounded in complexity theory integrated with critical realism, which will lead collectively to an explanatory theory of teacher learning in the context of initial teacher education.Members of the research team include Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Larry Ludlow (Lynch School of Education, Boston College) and Lexie Grudnoff, Fiona Ell, Mavis Haigh, and Mary Hill (Faculty of Education, University of Auckland).

Presentations Based on the Work of Project RITE:Chang, W-C. & Ludlow, L. H. Teaching for equity: How do we measure it? Paper presented at the American EducationalResearch Association annual meeting. Washington, D.C., April 9, 2016.

Ludlow, L., & Haigh, M. Digging deeper using quantitative and qualitative approaches. Paper presented at the annualmeeting of the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, PA, April 7, 2014.

HARTE (2012-2016)

The﻿HARTE project (Handbook Analysis of Research on Teacher Education)﻿refers to the work of a team of six researchers led by Marilyn Cochran-Smith (Boston College) and Ana Maria Villegas (Montclair State University), working with four doctoral students—Linda Abrams (Montclair State University), Laura Chavez-Moreno (Michigan State University), Tammy Mills (Montclair State University), and Rebecca Stern (Boston College). The team conducted a major review of research on teacher education from 2000-2012, which included more than 1500 studies about pre-professional teacher education published in the U.S or internationally.The full review appears in the 5th Handbook of Research on Teaching (Drew Gitomer and Courtney Bell, editors), an AERA project, which was released in April 2016.

To support the work of this review, Cochran-Smith and Villegas created a theoretical and analytical framework titled “Research as Historically-Situated Social Practice,” which combines ideas from the sociology of knowledge and with the notion of research as social practice, and situates research on teacher education within salient economic, intellectual, and demographic developmentsof the past half-century.This framework also examines the practices of researchers who are differently positioned from one another, havedivergent purposes and audiences, and who work both inside and outside teacher education. Applying this framework helped the research group identify three major programs of research: (a) research on teacher preparation accountability, effectiveness, and policy; (b) research on teacher preparation for the knowledge society; and (c) research on teacher preparation for diversity and equity. Each of these programs has within it multiple clusters and lines of research.

Members of the HARTE research team presented at multiple conferences and published several journal articles based on their research. Presentations include both invited and selected sessions at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meetings in 2013 and 2014, the New England Education Research Organization, the European Conference on Education, which is the annual meeting of the European Education Research Association (EERA). In addition, two articles have been published in the Journal of Teacher Education that detail the review that was conducted as well as the framework Drs. Cochran-Smith and Villegas developed. ﻿Publications and Presentations Based on the Work of HARTE:﻿Cochran-Smith, M., Villegas, A.M., Abrams, L., Chavez Moreno, L., Mills, T., & Stern, R. (2016). Research on teacher preparation: Charting the landscape of a sprawling field. In D. Gitomer & C. Bell (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching (5th ed., pp. 439-547). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Cochran-Smith, M. (2014). “Teacher Education Research: Surveying the Landscape.” Keynote address for the Bergen University National Conference on Teacher Education. University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway, October 23, 2014.

Cochran-Smith, M. (2014). "Teacher Preparation Research: Past, Present and Future.” Keynote address for the European Conference on Education Research (ECER), the Annual Meeting of the European Educational Research Association, Porto, Portugal, September 3, 2014.

Cochran-Smith, M. and Villegas, A. M. (2013), "Research on Teacher Education: Conceptualizing and Surveying the Field," Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). San Francisco, CA, May 1, 2013.

Cochran-Smith, M. Villegas, A. M. (2013). Research on teacher preparation as social practice: Reconceptualizing the Ffeld. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. San Francisco, CA., April 27, 2013.

Stern, R. (2013). Do I stay or do I go? Recruitment and retention of alternate route teachers. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the New England Educational Research Organization (NEERO). Portsmouth, NH, April 18, 2013.

﻿Holmes Scholars (2014-Present)﻿

Dr. Cochran-Smith with Juan Gabriel Sanchez and Shanee Wangia

The AACTE Holmes Scholars Program consists of doctoral students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds pursuing careers in education at AACTE member institutions. This program provides mentorship, peer support, and professional development opportunities to the Scholars, who in turn become an outstanding pool of candidates for future faculty and leadership positions.The Lynch School of Education is a member of the Holmes Scholars Program, and Dr. Cochran-Smith is the Coordinator of the LSOE program.Current LSOE Holmes Scholars are Juan Gabriel Sanchez, Shanee Wangia, and Alton Price all doctoral candidates in LSOE’s Curriculum and Instruction PhD program, which Dr. Cochran-Smith directs.

﻿​TNE (2003-2009)﻿

The TNE Team

The Teachers for a New Era (TNE) project﻿﻿, which began at Boston College in 2003, is an initiative funded primarily by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to improve the preparation of teachers. Instead of trying to shift the site of teacher preparation away from the university, TNEs position was that a university-based, but radically improved, kind of teacher preparation should be situated within the academy, given its unparalleled knowledge resources, research expertise, and potential for interdisciplinary collaborations. TNE projects are organized around three principles: respect for evidence, collaboration with arts and sciences, and teaching as a clinically- taught profession. As one of 11 grantees, BC received $5 million over 5 years plus technical support and institutional matching funds to improve teacher preparation and generate evidence about its impact on pupil learning.

Shortly after its selection as a TNE site, BC formed a multi-disciplinary Evidence Team responsible for conducting research to assess the impact of the program, with emphasis on evidence about teacher candidates and pupils learning. Later, as the work of the interdisciplinary team concentrated on teacher development and career trajectory, it was supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation. The Evidence Team created a large number of teacher education assessments and has also produced multiple published papers.

﻿Publications and Dissertations Based on the Work of TNE:Cochran-Smith, M.(2012). A Tale of Two Teachers: Learning to Teach Over time. The Record. 48: 108-122.